Aerial Rig Mark 2 test raise. SUCCESS!!!!!!!!

[frobzwiththingz]

So, for the past 2.5 months or so i've hermitting in the machine shop, barely seeing anyone and occasionally emitting streams of expletives from the depths of the basement. I feel intimately familiar with all of radioIO AMBIENT, and have pulled enough all-nighters in the machine shop to have heard their entire inventory. I've been working on Aerial Rig Mark 2, a rig of a very different design as the one that has been in my yard. Object was to design a rig that needed much less people to erect, could be transported using the two vehicles we own (both scion xBs), requiring minimal extra support tools to erect, and most importantly, require *NO* external guy wires and be able to be put up somewhere without any ground anchors needed. I wanted to bring this new rig, if ready, out to Burning Man, and guy wires are a danger to the public at night. And this one should be lighter, and made of aluminum instead of steel. And i wanted a swiveling mount point integrated into the rig, so that we could make our silk rigging simpler.

Anyhow, this project has eaten all of my spare time since early May. I thought it would be much easier than the last rig. I mean, what could be so hard about building an equilateral pyramid, with a tension cable network at the bottom to keep it in place?

Of course, as it turns out, the devil is in the details. And boy were there details. I won't describe them here; ask me in person if you have any interest. And as the deadline for having things ready for packing onto the Boston Burning Truck approached, i began to think that i had bitten off way more than i could chew in time. Thats when the weekend all-nighters started. And then the stints in the shop on a work night until 3am. At some point last week i crawled into bed around 3 and said to klingonlandlady, "I don't know how much more of this i have in me."

Today, however, all of the work has seen fruition, as we did a successful full-height test raising of the not-final, but good-enough to be functional rig. It only took 4 people to raise and lower, as opposed to the 8 or so the square rig requires (or the *30* you need to raise the square one in an open field)

I was sort of dreading the test today, worried that we'd find *some* fatal problem in either the design or raising method. But everything worked! Lots of thanks to klingonlandlady, sensesurfer, and doze_e_fish for their help in the project today. More thanks to sensesurfer for the use of the Multicam 1500 CNC Machine Of Doom. Onward to the Playa! much much much thanks and love to klingonlandlady, who has put up with me during this long episode of hyperfocus. Hoping to relax a bit now.



Here are all the parts and support rigging. The milk crates in the back contain all that is needed to raise the rig.



In this photo we see the rig assembled , but folded flat on the ground. Already in existence in Aerial Rig Mark 1, the Steel Behomoth.



This is a closeup of a leg base plate. The axle positions for leg and wheels are positioned such that after a certain amount of winching in, on grass or playa surface it will form a ratchet brake that prevents backsliding while winching the rig up. This worked almost *too* well on our soft grass.



Each leg has a come-along and cable-pulley system, going in to a central hub temporarily rebared into the ground.



Partially winched up.



Almost there.



At full height now, base cable network attached. The top spider is still loose though. it needed to be to be a hinged system to raise it. Now, however, we need to climb up and tighten the bolts up there and turn it into a rigid unit. Here i climb up the silk, with a pre-rigged climbing harness, rope, and GriGri belay device to clip in to the main point.



Now i tighten the hinge bolts. Note that i have tied off my tools.



Here is a close-up of the central spider structure, that pushes the pyramid sides out to a 2 foot radius from center, making almost all of the rig useable space. Good view of the built-in swivel mount.



Ready to test out for real! Get those crash pads!



Gratuitous silk pictures.

Comments

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

everyone else seems to have said "elegant," so i feel a bit sheepish that that is the first thing i thought also, when i got to the photo that showed how it raises. very cool. did you design this? and if so, have you posted about it to the rigging forums?

why so adamant about integrating a swivel? for the 5 inches of height you don't have to lose attaching one? hm, i guess that's reasonable, actually.

awesome!

[frobzwiththingz.livejournal.com]

Yes, the whole shebang is my design, though i doubt that i'm the first person to try something like this.

As for the built-in swivel, reasons are two-fold; yes, you get an extra half a foot of height by removing the swivel and extra biner from your rigging. Its not huge, but every little bit adds up. Second, there is a recurring thread on all of the rigging lists in which folk grumble about how there is no way to back up the Petzl swivels that everyone uses, and that nobody makes an equivalent unit out of steel, and that they'd love to get that last bit of aluminum rigging hardware out of the loop if they could. Well, it occured to me that since i'd be using the rig mostly for silk, i should just build the swivel bearing into the design, solving that problem once and for all. Heck, thrust bearings are even cheap, to boot.

[drwex]

It seems like it's worth at least doing a preliminary set of patent investigations. I doubt the market would be huge in a practical sense, but just getting your name on it would be a nice coda.